


Swarm

by kepic



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28878750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kepic/pseuds/kepic
Summary: Taylor triggers with a different powerset and truly becomes the Swarm.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 64





	1. Awakenings

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of the rewrite. I left the original up at fanfiction.net as a lesson to myself (and as an example to others).

##  **Swarm**

To make it clear: All rights to characters, setting, story and central concepts in this story remain the property of Wildbow, Worm's author. This is just me playing in the sandbox. Worm can be found at parahumans dot wordpress dot com.

* * *

###  **Awakenings**

It felt like those few last feet before breaking the surface after diving as long as I could. The feeling was same, but I was trapped in it, forever unable to break the surface. Yet it wasn't as bad or panic-inducing as it sounds. I heard sounds, voices, broken pieces of conversation.

"… understand, your daughter is a parahuman. Our regular staff is not…"

Electronic beeps and clangs of metal against metal, something wet against my skin and then gone again. I sunk deeper and heard no more.

Then another attempt at surfacing, more sounds, broken bits of conversation.

"… want them punished for …"

A touch, an unpleasant smell of disinfectant. Again that feeling of something wet against my skin, wiping me down. Still, not enough to allow me to break the surface and I sink again.

"-or, honey, are you waking up? Taylor?"

I jerked awake. No gentle eternity trying to break the surface and find relief, but being pushed into cold shower directly from bed. I gasped. The light hurt my eyes. That voice, it's — it's Dad. I realized he held my hand. I closed my eyes because they hurt, and I couldn't see much without my glasses anyways. Then I tried to speak but I couldn't make a sound, my mouth and throat were so dry.

"Here, drink this. Just a sip," someone said. Not my Dad. A woman.

A straw was pressed against my lower lip. I let it slip into my mouth and sucked some water into my mouth, gulping the first bit down. Then slower, letting the water rinse my mouth, slowly swirling it back and forth before swallowing. I tried to speak again.

"Dad. Where am I?" My voice was broken and raspy. Opening my eyes slowly I got them to adjust to the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights. I was slowly calming down.

I was in a hospital room. The top half of the walls were white and the lower pale green. Curtains covered the window and there was no light coming through. I glanced at a wall clock and noticed that the time was almost two a.m. There were two chairs, a TV, and a small table next to my bed.

Dad looked a little apprehensive, then seemed to steel himself. I could sense that he was still unsure of himself seeing how some of his muscles were tensed.

"Taylor, we're in a hospital. Something happened at school. Do you remember?"

Of course I did. I would probably never forget. The locker broke me. Finally, they had managed what they had tried since the beginning of school.

I remember thinking that it couldn't get any worse. That surely after my spirit broke and the bugs did their worst and I had bloodied myself thrashing and trying futilely to escape was enough. Then I passed out for a while. After coming to it all came back and it was all so fresh again that I struggled with renewed vigor. I tried to brush off the bugs on my face and head only to see my raised hand disassemble. It turned into bugs. I screamed. I blacked out.

Dad filled in what had happened after that. Eventually a janitor noticed the smell and opened the locker. I fell out, he called an ambulance, he and plenty of others saw my missing hand, the ambulance crew tried to shoo bugs away but failed, the bugs buzzed where my hand should have been and reformed back into it.

The ambulance took me to Brockton Bay General and everyone and their grandparents filled out NDA's. PRT was alerted and arrived, a call went to Protectorate. Miss Militia arrived, got the story from the paramedics, sent people to the school. They identified me, informed my dad, and searched my room and the house. They found my bullying diary.

Since I was obviously a parahuman the PRT took over that aspect of the investigation and liaised with the police department. BBPD would take care of the more mundane aspects of the case.

Miss Militia had asked Panacea if she could be used as a cover because of my hand. Panacea approved the little deception, and a rumor of her involvement was started. It would explain my hand growing back. I shuddered at the thought.

"Taylor, Miss Militia said that she'd like to talk with you. Is that OK?"

I was a bit overwhelmed and anxious, too. Miss Militia wanted to meet me!

"Sure, when?" I asked.

* * *

It took about an hour for Miss Militia to arrive. Apparently, she didn't sleep so coming over at two a.m. didn't really bother her. She was dressed in her iconic fatigues and flag scarf and her weapon was currently a pistol in a holster on her side.

"Hello Danny, Taylor," she said as she entered. I was surprised at the informality.

"Hi," my dad answered.

Miss Militia sat and turned to face me.

"So, Taylor, how are you feeling?"

I hesitated. "Well but weak. Tired, which is funny since I've slept something like two days."

"It's to be expected. Coma isn't exactly sleeping."

"Guess so," I said. There was a short and uncomfortable silence.

"So Taylor, have you had time to think about what you're going to do? More specifically, what are you going to do about your powers?"

"No, not really. I'm not even sure what my powers are. Dad told me that the paramedics saw bugs coming together to form my hand back, but all I remember is my hand becoming apart." I shivered at the memory and squeezed my dad's hand.

"With the Wards you'd have time to find out more about your powers. We might be able to help you train, too. As soon as you're on your feet you can come to visit the Wards whenever you want. We'll arrange a meet for you," she said. A moment later she continued: "Is there anything else you'd like to know?"

"Is there anything I need to know? There are a lot of rumors on PHO forums and I don't really know if any of them are real."

Miss Militia was quiet for a moment. "Well, PHO isn't the most reliable of sources, but they do get some things right occasionally. Some things, especially about Wards, PRT and Protectorate, you'll find out if you sign up but I don't see any harm in telling things that are public knowledge in the cape community," she said. She thought for a moment before continuing.

"Perhaps the most important are the so-called unwritten rules. Respect the secret identities and don't go after a cape's family. Avoid killing. Honor truces agreed by multiple parties, especially Endbringer truces. Sexual assaults of any kind are utterly forbidden. No widespread attacks on civilians. No mind control. Avoid using guns unless your power functions exclusively on them. Use bows, swords or other historic weapons," she counted with her fingers. "These rules are even stricter for Endbringer fights. If someone breaks the rules, usually everyone works together to take punitive action, whether hero or villain. The most flagrant disregard for the rules lands one in the Birdcage or with a kill order," she said somewhat grimly. Then she shook her head as if to clear it.

"Not that any of this matters to you if you don't intend to go out as a cape. However, I have to warn you that it's exceedingly difficult to refrain from using powers. I don't know anyone who's succeeded in the long run."

I listened with fascination and some trepidation. So unwritten rules were real. Not everything was what were claimed on the PHO forums, but most of it matched.

We exchanged some pleasantries for a while after that. I noticed there was something strange about how Miss Militia and dad acted towards each other. Probably just my imagination.

* * *

There was a spider on my wall. I sat on my bed, as far from it as possible, hugging my knees. The terror was overwhelming. The spider was the first bug I had seen since the locker. I couldn't move from the bed, the terror was too much for me. Even screaming for dad was beyond me.

I twitched. No. A part of me twitched. I watched my hand ripple, bugs crawling on and in it. My first reaction was revulsion. The second intrigue. Then came fascination. For a moment I forgot the spider. Then I glanced it. For a moment I hesitated. Then I watched my hand and… willed… some cockroaches to emerge. Unlike the spider, I felt no fear of these. I knew logically that cockroaches were some of the bugs that had shared my time in the locker. These bugs felt different. They were a part of me, like an arm or a leg. I could even sense through them, even if those senses were strange. I walked them to the spider. It tried to escape but one of the roaches touched the spider and an awareness of it bloomed in my mind. I twisted my cockroaches, and they split into spiders, most of them larger than the original. I ran after the original, attacked it. Then, I ate it.

I came back to myself and realized what I had done. I ran into the bathroom and puked my guts out. Still, I felt myself back in my room. My spider senses detected other bugs, and when I converted some of them back into cockroaches I sensed even more. While I had been off puking the spiders had done what spiders did — almost nothing for most of the time. It seemed they were almost autonomous in the same way my other body parts were when I wasn't directly in control.

I steeled myself. Eating other bugs was what bugs did. I sent my… No, **I** went after the other bugs. My coordination overcame each one easily. Each bug I ate allowed me to convert the extra mass into more bugs and I hastened the cleansing by converting more of me into bugs hunting not-me-bugs.

It took hours but eventually I was sure there were no more not-me-bugs in the house. I pulled back enough bugs to replace whatever mass I had converted earlier. Then I began to scour the yard. January wasn't really the prime time for bugs and I lost all the smallest bugs I sent. I used the largest cockroaches I could form to drag them back inside and eat them and then tried to search the yard again. It was fruitless. I found some overwintering bugs but nothing significant. I'd need to wait for warmer weather to make any progress in spreading out.

* * *

Hannah was pensive. Her earlier row with Danny Hebert and then meeting Taylor herself had made her wonder about Winslow. Especially since Shadow Stalker went to the same school and was of the age with Taylor.

Danny hadn't appreciated PRT's intrusion to his home at all. He had been furious, loud and even a little scary. For a tall, skinny man with a weak chin, Danny had one hell of a temper. It was no wonder Dockworker's Union had him as the spokesperson. She had to admit to a certain level of admiration towards the man. Being the head of hiring for the Association was bound to be frustrating since the creation of the boat graveyard.

Even worse had been what they had found when they had searched Taylor's room. The diary Taylor had kept was horrendous to read, and they had managed to substantiate enough of it that they were sure that it was an accurate, if biased, description of events. Taylor's email accounts alone… Well, Sophia wasn't going to talk herself out of this.

They had had another loud argument when Hannah revealed to Danny what they had found out. Not Shadow Stalker's identity, of course, but the situation at Taylor's school. This time Hannah had had the foresight to discuss the matter in relative privacy. No doubt the first row was the stuff of exaggerated rumors in the hospital already.

Still, they had found common ground in the end. Once his temper had run its course, Danny was a surprisingly rational man. Hannah hoped that everything would turn out fine for Taylor. Waking up to having powers, especially one that was an uncommonly clear reminder of what her trigger event had been, was bound to be hard. Not for the first, or the last, time she hoped that they had more psychiatrists willing to work with parahumans.

Hannah hoped that she would see more of Taylor, perhaps even as a Ward. Seeing Danny wouldn't be a too bad either.


	2. Knowledge is frustration

To make it clear: All rights to characters, setting, story and central concepts in this story remain the property of Wildbow, Worm's author. This is just me playing in the sandbox. Worm can be found at parahumans dot wordpress dot com.

* * *

## Knowledge is frustration

I ran. It was effortless, my stride long and steady. I wasn't even short of breath, and I had run at least a couple of kilometers. I was returning home, occasionally directing some of my bug-selves to check on houses and warehouses on the way, like I had done the whole run.

While January was far from optimal for arthropods the distances to relatively warm places were short enough. I hated bugs of all kinds, which was sort of ironic, I suppose. It was different with my bug-selves, of course, since they were me. As soon as I got inside the hunt began. I would not tolerate any bugs near me that weren't me.

Suddenly I found that one of the old warehouses was much warmer than the others and still had power based on the light levels. I morphed the bug-me's there to see better. I had found out during my experimentation that using several kinds gave me a pretty good vision. The same applied to hearing, although that required even more variety. Apparently bugs usually had pretty limited range of frequencies they could hear and produce.

I could see that the main floor of the warehouse was filled with tables and people. The people were scantly dressed and were bagging various powders in small bags. It appeared that I had come across a drug processing center for one of the gangs.

I took a closer look at the people and the building in general. There was an office hanging on one of the walls with people overseeing the operation. Unlike the people on the first floor, these had weapons and were fully clothed.

Based on the general level of hygiene and the fact that I could smell drugs in people's sweat I thought these were Merchants. Supporting this hypothesis was the fact that the people weren't all Asians, which ruled out ABB, and there were blacks there as well, which ruled out E88.

I didn't think much about the operation after a few minutes of investigating it and went to look for natural bugs to kill. I intended to replace as much of them with my bug-selves as possible. While I didn't get too jumpy around normal bugs these days, I still hated them. And since I had a pretty good and ecologically sound way to deal with the issue, I did so. To avoid upsetting the ecosystem I had to hang around doing bug stuff, but it didn't really inconvenience me too much.

I got home and found my Dad waiting for me. It was Saturday, and he had stayed home, which was kind of a surprise. He had tried to be more involved in my life since the locker, though, so it wasn't totally unexpected.

"Taylor, please come here for a second," he said, standing in front of the large mirror in the hallway.

I did so, and he grabbed my shoulders and turned me to look in the mirror. I looked at myself for a few seconds before realizing what he meant to show me. Athletic abilities weren't really my thing, had never been, but despite that I seemed to be in excellent shape. Actually, I didn't know if it was possible for me to be in any better shape.

"Huh, nice. I didn't even notice. And the run was way too easy, too, even if I seem to be in top shape."

"Your powers seem to be more versatile than we thought, dear," Dad said.

I thought back and had an inkling of what had happened. Last night I had finally taken the leap of faith and willed my whole body to turn into bugs. It had been pretty strange. I had lost my normal human senses but otherwise it didn't seem to have affected my mind much, and returning to my human form had been easy. It seemed I had missed something after that.

There were other things I had found out these past few weeks when trying out my powers. I didn't exactly need to eat or sleep, and I could transform one bug to another, or several others, if the mass was similar. I could also absorb my bug-selves to my human form to restore mass.

It was exceedingly odd to let my bug-selves do their thing and still be aware of it in some manner. I now knew far too much about the life cycles of bugs, although it was interesting to see that I could transform bugs in any phase of their life into other bugs or absorb them into my human form.

There seemed to be no size or mass limitations, but all the bugs I could use were arthropods. That probably meant that I could also use crabs and such, although trying it out would have to wait. While it wouldn't be impossible to acquire lobsters, for example, they were expensive.

As I could acquire templates for critters by touching them with my bug-selves, collecting new ones shouldn't be too difficult.

I turned to look at my Dad but froze midway. There was something going on at one of our neighbor's house. Apparently the man in the house was an abusive prick, and I just now found it out since I now had enough bugs in there to be aware of what was going on inside. While it might be a violation of privacy it was sort of difficult to avoid if I wanted to avoid being found out or disturbing the local ecosystems.

"Dad, did you know that Mr. Henderson beats his wife?"

* * *

"So let me get this straight," Dad said. "You can see and hear what's going on at the Hendersons?" His voice wasn't approving. I couldn't exactly blame him.

"Well, yeah, kinda," I said, shifting a little. "Does that matter, though? What am I supposed to do now that I know?"

Dad's expression soured again. "Nothing. Not unless you could have found out about it some other way than your powers. You'd be outing yourself in no time, and it's not exactly legal what you're doing, either."

I grit my teeth. "But he's hurting Mrs. Henderson!"

"Taylor, dear, sometimes you see or hear things you can do nothing about. This is one of those times, unless you want to be outed, or figure out another way to catch him."

"What if I go out as a cape?"

"Privacy laws still apply. You can't go in, unless you hear a crime happening from outside, or someone yells for help."

"So I can do nothing? Really?"

Dad seemed to slump a little. "I don't see how, Taylor. If you come up with something, then maybe. Please tell me first, though. I want to make sure you won't get in trouble." He seemed to think a little. "How did you notice, though? What's your range?"

"I don't know. If there's a range limit, I haven't found it yet," I told him. "I'm spread over a radius of two kilometers now. What if I called police from a public phone? Claim I heard fighting?"

"Might not work out. I doubt this is the first time, and Mrs. Henderson hasn't come forward yet. Have you found out something else interesting?"

I considered whether I wanted to tell him about the Merchant warehouse. He might call the cops, which would be sort of fine, of course, but on the other hand the warehouse could be good practice if I decided to go out as a cape. Besides, the cops probably knew about the warehouse anyways.

We were getting along better, though, so hiding something like this from Dad might really hurt our relationship. I sighed, and told him. "Yeah, there's a Merchant warehouse two blocks from that old sail factory. They're packing drugs."

He looked surprised. "Isn't that E88 territory?"

I had been tracking the movements of the gangs for the past couple of weeks. Just in case. "Nominally, I guess. They've laid claim to it but there's no activity of any kind from them. So I figure Merchants are thinking that it's safe for them."

Dad worried his lower lip. "Do you want to call the police, or try out something yourself?"

It was my turn to be surprised. "What? You'd let me go?"

He shrugged. "I've been reading, too. Miss Militia was right, it seems. Not using your powers isn't really an option, and knowing you, you'd go out heroing at some point regardless. This way I'm at least aware of what you do. You never know, your dear old Dad might even be helpful."

I examined Dad. He seemed to be on the level, but he was a pretty shrewd negotiator, so even if he was planning something, I'd probably never know. I nodded. "Okay. I'll get rid of any normal bugs over there and see if I need to get more mass over there. I'm not leaving here, though, so you don't need to worry about me running around."

Dad was looking at me strangely. "Did you grow just now?"

I was spooked and ran to the mirror. There were changes from before visible. "What the hell is going on?!"

Dad walked to the hallway, examining me. "You're buffer, too."

Something occurred to me, then, and I ran to my room. Once there, I transformed my whole body to bugs. Ignoring the change in perspective and senses, I focused on the template library in my head. The one I knew to correspond to my human form was changing in front of my eyes.

I transformed back to a human and dressed myself. Going back downstairs I saw Dad in the kitchen, holding a mug of coffee. On the table was another mug and I could smell my favorite tea.

"It appears my human template changes as I touch other humans. If it works the same way it does with bugs, I'm getting better as the template is updated."

"Well, that explains the glasses," Dad said.

"What?" I raised my hand to touch the glasses but realized they were still on my table upstairs. I slowly lowered my hand. "Right. This sucks. How am I going to avoid outing myself now?"

Dad looked at me for a while, then snapped his finger. His face relaxed into a smile. "You're a bright kid, Taylor. How does homeschooling sound?"

I grinned. It sounded wonderful.


	3. Appearances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What does Swarm look like? Or, more importantly, how do they want to be perceived?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To make it clear: All rights to characters, setting, story and central concepts in this story remain the property of Wildbow, Worm's author. This is just me playing in the sandbox. Worm can be found at parahumans.wordpress.com .

## Appearances

I naturally knew that genetics paid a lot in how people looked and how fit they were. It just surprised me that druggies had anything for my power to get from them. I should have known that even if people consciously decided to destroy their lives, their genetics wouldn't change for that.

Over the course of the week I gained almost ten centimeters of height and several kilograms of weight, all of it muscle. I didn't need glasses anymore, and I was more fit than ever. Combined with my power I could do ridiculous feats of strength and agility.

I was sort of sad that my power didn't consider looks worth anything when it came to fighting ability. Of course it wasn't, to my knowledge, but it would have been nice to be prettier. I didn't know if my features had changed much, if at all, but at least my dad hadn't commented on it.

I had already been tall for my age and gender. Now my height was positively ridiculous for a fifteen-year-old girl. It was likely that my height was perfectly possible and on the upper edge of natural, but it was also memorably unusual. I'd draw notice wherever I was unless people thought I was older than I was.

My body type was also different. Where I had been a beanpole, but still somewhat feminine, now I was almost masculine in build. My chest and shoulders were wider, my muscles had clear definition, even through the reasonable amount of fat over them. Like with my face, my power didn't seem to care about breasts at all. At least I had kept my hair.

I had brainstormed the takedown of the people in the drug warehouse with my dad. Our plan required some training, and that was what I had done for the past week. My humanoid bug swarm was pretty neat, and a lot creepy. Exactly what we were looking for.

I could even talk with it, kind of. The voice was even creepier than the form. The first time I had managed it I had immediately used it to scare my dad shitless. It was hilarious.

I had also been moving more of myself to the warehouse. I estimated that I had enough mass there for at least three humanoid shapes. Not that I was going to use them simultaneously, of course, but it was nice to know that I had spares.

"Taylor, it's time," Dad said. We had picked early evening for the attack. Dad had bought a prepaid cell for this, despite his dislike of the things, and was going to go near the warehouse to call the cops. They would probably call PRT since it would be pretty obvious a cape was around.

I nodded and closed my eyes. Dad found it less creepy when I did that while controlling parts of me far away. Somehow he knew when I was doing that even though I could do it while talking with him. Perhaps my multitasking ability wasn't as good as I thought.

"Good luck, kiddo," he said and I heard the front door open and close. I focused on the warehouse.

* * *

The warehouse was still a strange combination of clean and dirty. The drugs themselves were pretty clean, as were the tables where the mostly naked people worked on them. The people themselves smelled of drugs and sweat and worse things.

The supervisor's booth midway up the wall was far nastier. With no need for the cleanliness the operation downstairs required the place was a pigsty. Fast food wrappers and empty bottles were everywhere, various drugs were on a table sticky with the remains of various fluids, and nothing had been washed in ages, people included.

I was sure there were no capes present. I could hear and see perfectly well through my bug-selves if I just had the right bugs. The final check of the warehouse and the immediate surroundings didn't find anything amiss.

I exhaled with my human body, trying to get over my nervousness. It was time to act. We had agreed on theatricality, trying to prevent a fight if we could, and make them nervous and sloppy if they decided to try something.

I flowed inside from all over the place, concentrating my bugs in the middle of the warehouse floor. From a huge mound of bugs I formed my humanoid bug body. People were already screaming and running away from the bugs, and more and more of them were going for the doors when I looked around with the bug-man. It was an act, of course. I could see perfectly well in all directions without moving at all.

"Hey, hey, hey! What the fuck is going on down there?!"

It was one of the fully dressed people from the overseer's office. He had come out to the landing in front of the office door and was looking down. It didn't take long for him to notice me.

"Oh fuck, a cape. Tommy, call Skidmark!"

I laughed. Coming from the bug-man it was mostly buzzing. I had pulled whatever phones they had had on the tables down to the floor with some bug-selves and had wrapped them in spider silk to boot. When one of them, probably Tommy, cursed when he didn't find his phone he went to grab one from the back pocket of the guy on the landing.

That wouldn't do. I flew in one wasp-self and stung the back of his hand. Tommy, if that was he, pulled his hand back, yelping from the pain and then cursing a storm.

"Dude, you don't wanna do this! We're Merchants! We'll fuck you up if you screw with us!"

I could see Dad coming a couple of blocks away. I'd need to stall a bit.

"I don't care if you're Merchants. I wouldn't care if you were Empire. No one deals in this crap in my city," I said. I could actually feel the shiver going down the guy's back when he heard the fucked up voice. Having bugs on them made sensing them easy. It was also yucky - many of these guys had had parasite problems long before I came along.

"Fuck you!" He shouted and tried to shoot me.

The attempt was good even if it didn't do anything to me. Couple of my bug-selves died but most were simply pushed aside when the bullet hit them. I had to add a little to my non-existing respect for the guy. Either he was a good shot or that was just good luck. Had I been human he would have blown my head to bits.

Allowing myself to be shot was what we had decided with Dad. It was his suggestion, actually. He thought it would add to Swarm's legend if he'd be invulnerable. It also upped the terror aspect nicely.

Yep, we had decided to name my cape self Swarm. Kind of obvious, but also pretty accurate and descriptive. Something easy to remember and recognize. We were already planning on creating a PHO profile for him. It was important that he be approachable online, since it was unlikely he'd give off any positive vibes for anyone in the field.

After a couple of shots I decided that enough was enough. He wasn't that good a shot anyways. Out of six subsequent shots only one had hit Swarm-self at all.

"My turn," I said, and dispersed. I came in form everywhere, positively filling the interior of the warehouse with bug-selves. I stung and bit where needed until they were cowering on the floor in a fetal position. Spiders and preprepared spider silk strands tied them up once they stopped struggling.

Couple of the nearly naked ones had allergic reactions to the bee stings, so I brought EpiPens and managed to use them on the ones near anaphylaxis. There were other things I had stashed in the warehouse in case I needed them, but it seemed most of it would have to be extracted before the PRT and the cops found them.

This was when I also had some larger swarms take rounds outside so that Dad would actually have something to call in. I felt a bit foolish when I realized that I could have had bug-selves in the car with him to hear and see what he did, and with enough of them I could have talked with him. Since it was still quite chilly for my bug-selves the rounds were pretty short.

I looked around, pretty satisfied about how I had done. Beyond the couple of cases of allergic reactions no one seemed to be hurt, everyone was tied up, and as far as I knew no one had gotten a chance to call their leaders.

I eyed the drugs for a moment but I really couldn't do much about it. The cops would probably just stash them somewhere until disposal. I hoped the drugs wouldn't turn up later - I knew that sometimes stuff disappeared from evidence rooms and were later found on the streets. Corruption seemed to be pretty much standard in Brockton Bay, on all levels of law enforcement and governance.

I stayed hovering above the disabled thugs, both figuratively and literally. Almost fifteen minutes later the PRT showed up, a few police cars following. I checked that all gang members were still relatively healthy and waited for them to get in. I hid most of my bug-selves and kept only Swarm-self easily noticeable.

The PRT troopers got out of their vehicle, with Assault and Miss Militia. It made sense to send Protectorate members if a new cape was likely to be involved. The troopers were consummate professionals, preparing to breach the warehouse much like I had seen in the movies. I didn't see any flashbangs or other grenades, though. Both Assault and Miss Militia seemed to be familiar with the procedure.

Despite the lack of grenades the breach was loud and sudden. Those crooks still capable of any movement shrunk away from the troopers coming in. I made sure to look as non-threatening as a humanoid form composed of a swarm of bugs can be.

Some troopers stayed outside but both heroes came in. Miss Militia seemed to almost miss a step when she saw me but continued forward until she was a couple of meters away. Assault stood next to her, examining me with apparent interest.

"You're new around here. Is this your work?" Assault asked while indicating the bound up criminals with a sweep of his arm.

"Yes. I came upon this place on my patrols. Took a while to get enough of me here but I managed it tonight."

Assault nodded. "That's OK. What should we call you?"

"I'm Swarm."

"So, interested in a Protectorate job?" The question was casual, and he probably expected my answer.

"Not at this time, no. I'd be a nightmare for PR, and I don't deal well with bureaucracy."

Assault shrugged. "Had to ask. So what happened here?"

I was surprised that it was Assault speaking instead of Miss Militia. She was the second in command of the local Protectorate branch. Perhaps he was simply more talkative and personable.

"I came across this place some time ago on one of my patrols. I brought in more of myself slowly as to avoid notice, and finally made my move tonight. I coalesced here in the middle of the floor and the workers ran immediately. Not that they could go far - their bosses had locked the exits. One of the leaders came up on that catwalk leading to the office. We exchanged some words and then he shot me. Not very effective against a swarm, so he proved not to be very bright. I dispersed across the warehouse, subduing people with my presence, and, when needed, with a few stings and bites. I had brought EpiPens in with me, so everyone should be OK at least until you get them to the hospital. There are some bugs forming a circle on each one I had to use the adrenaline on."

"And that's it? No fight, no fuss?"

"Nothing beyond couple of ineffective shots," I replied.

"Damn. I wish everyone would be as restrained and effective," Assault said.

"What are your plans going onward?" Miss Militia asked.

"I keep on patrolling and if I find more trouble, I'll deal with it. I was just about to call for you guys when you were already outside. Perhaps I wasn't as inconspicuous as I thought."

"Very well. If you need anything don't hesitate to call," she said, handing out a card with contact information. I don't know if Assault noticed but it had her info on it, not the Protectorate's. I absorbed the card into my body.

"Are we done here?"

"Yeah, we can deal with the rest. Good to see new non-villain faces. See you later," Assault said.

I lifted my left hand to wave at them and dispersed. There were enough nooks and crannies around that I could hide my bug-selves without actually going out. It was still cold outside.

* * *

Later that night, after Dad had gotten home with pizzas, the doorbell rang. We had already cleaned up a bit, and Dad opened the door almost before the sound of the bell ended. It would have been hard to miss her with my bugs all around the neighborhood.

"Miss Militia," Dad greeted her.


End file.
